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Users will be able to turn their phones and tablets into de facto portable PC monitors for playing Steam games around the house later this month. That's when Valve has announced it will be launching its new Steam Link app for iOS and Android, officially bringing Steam's long-established in-home streaming feature to mobile devices for the first time (though there have been unofficialapps to provide similar functions for a while now).

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The free Steam Link app will be available for phones and tablets running Android or iOS (though Android support will be in beta for launch) starting the week of May 21. Apple TV and Android-based TV platforms will also run the software, Valve said, essentially turning those set-top boxes into versions of Valve's own standalone Steam Link hardware.

The mobile app will link to a "Mac or PC" host system, according to the announcement (Update: A Valve representative tells Ars Linux and SteamOS are also supported), relaying game images and sound and transmitting controller input over 5Ghz Wi-Fi or wired Ethernet. While Valve said the app will include support for the Steam Controller, MFi-certified iOS controllers, "and more," it's unclear whether more generic USB/bluetooth controllers and/or mouse/keyboard setups will be usable via the mobile app (Update: A Valve representative tells Ars that keyboard/mouse controls will be supported, with a fuller list of compatible controllers available before launch).

Valve also announced an accompanying Steam Video app, available this summer, that will let users watch "thousands of movies and shows" available on Steam directly via a Wi-Fi or LTE connection. That could be an important new viewing option if Valve wants its more gaming-focused Steam service to compete on non-interactive media with the likes of iTunes, Google Play, etc.

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Kyle Orland
Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area. Emailkyle.orland@arstechnica.com//Twitter@KyleOrl

Kinda torn here. I like the idea of the Steam app on my phone having more utility than just 2FA, and I even have a converter to hook up my Steam Controller to my phone, but I just can't see myself really wanting to play my PC games on my phone. Not only that, but I'd bet dollars to donuts it would be unusable for any kind of real-time multiplayer.

Also, who actually uses Steam Video in the first place? The vast majority of the content is available on Netflix/Hulu/Crunchyroll, and almost always overpriced, even during discounts.

Depending on the delay of the stream it may not be that good. I have a steamlink, and even over a local connection you can tell there is a bit o lag. Only if I were playing a turn based game like xcom would this remain viable over stream as far as I can tell

I'm not saying it's a bad idea, in fact I think people have been clamoring for this for quite a while.

But this doesn't appeal to me specifically because my phone doesn't support HDMI, and a 5.5" display is too small for playing modern PC games. Maybe Shovel Knight and other similar indie titles, but certainly not Skyrim.

I've used Parsec for quite some time to effectively play games on my phone (and it works over the internet too) the biggest problem is UX - the vast majority of games don't work with touchscreen obviously, even when they would with only a minor change or two (FTL - all we need is an onscreen pause button!) Civ VI and X-Com 2 work pretty well on a bigger tablet with touch screen with some annoyances. The most success I've had is with pairing an X-Box controller with my phone and I have a clip that clips the phone to the X-box controller so it's similar in nature to the nvidia shield.

Why would they bother making games when they've already won the ultimate game? They're in a position of power that will take decades to unseat, and in the meantime they're making money hand over fist for doing little more than maintaining some servers and occasionally publishing fan-made content. Making games is the work of struggling people, Valve hasn't had to struggle since 2011.

Now if you could take that stream and turn it into two side-by-side stereo images, you could put your phone in one of those drop-in VR headsets and play a rudimentary (but cheap!) version of your games in VR.

I almost did this with Elite Dangerous once... I did get it working on the phone w/stereo vision, but it was (as you probably guessed) so laggy as to be unplayable.

Why would they bother making games when they've already won the ultimate game?

Professional pride. Fulfillment. Artistic expression. Because they can. It's not like making a flop would affect Valve. Nobody is going to stop using steam because Valve made a shitty game. So really there's no reason not to. Their revenue is intact. Might as well spend a few of those bajillions and work on a passion.

Kinda torn here. I like the idea of the Steam app on my phone having more utility than just 2FA, and I even have a converter to hook up my Steam Controller to my phone, but I just can't see myself really wanting to play my PC games on my phone. Not only that, but I'd bet dollars to donuts it would be unusable for any kind of real-time multiplayer.

Also, who actually uses Steam Video in the first place? The vast majority of the content is available on Netflix/Hulu/Crunchyroll, and almost always overpriced, even during discounts.

I assume that control method input would be local to the device that is being streamed to? Given a sufficient system, that means I could potentially run two games at home on different screens simultaneously? If so, future purchases may be in order...

Because you can hook that 6" phone up to your TV (assuming you don't already have another device connected to it that can handle Steam streaming)?

Because you could get a smaller device (Raspberry Pi or equivalent) and use it as a remote PC/console elsewhere in the house instead of building another full blown gaming rig?

Because I can safely and trivially hang that 6" screen directly above my face on a $25 lamp arm/microphone style mount from the table next to my couch, take my PS4 controller and use the bluetooth dongle on my PC as a controller, and then get out my nice wireless headphones, and as long as I can get a cable into the phone I can play as long as the batteries to everything else hold while lying flat on my couch, which does good things for how long MY batteries last since my back can be a bit pissy some days.

Yeah, it's not gonna look as glorious as on the 32" TV I have for my central monitor, but as long as I can tell what I'm shooting at I can do a fun lazy Destiny or Division grind, or whatever else I pick up next as long as it works on a controller fine. I can even have my cat sleep on me, which she does from the top of the chair when I'm at my PC, which is cute but again, hell on my back.

So to beat a more or less dead horse, this isn't about the glorious image, it's about the convenience of the thing.

How do you connect a steam controller to a phone/tablet? It uses a proprietary USB dongle rather than Bluetooth right?

If everything is within range of everything else, you may not need to under some circumstances.

I sometimes use game streaming from my Xbox One to my Windows laptop, within the living room, while the TV is set to an input source other than the Xbox. I just pick up any old gamepad and turn it on. The streaming client warns that there's no gamepad attached to the PC, but it doesn't matter. I just pick up a gamepad paired with the Xbox, and once I click through that warning, it all works fine.

This won't help if the source and destination are in different rooms, but that's not the only use case for this technology.

(Not to mention: Android devices in particular may have no problem with a USB dongle. I've got an OTG cable for my tablet that lets me plug in arbitrary keyboards and such without any issues. The Apple USB adapter hardware exists too, but probably wouldn't support the dongle without extra support Apple is not likely to provide.)

EDIT: I just looked it up, and apparently the chips used in the Steam Controller's radio can, in theory, support BTLE, though the device doesn't use them that way. I don't know if a firmware update would be enough to enable that, but if so, that'd solve the problem even for iOS devices. (Activision once made a BTLE gamepad that only works for their own games, but they didn't have to go through Apple's MFi certification because BTLE devices don't have to be certified, and the same device worked with both their iOS and their Android games. It was the gamepad used in the generic "tablet" version of "Sklyanders: Trap Team" and in the iOS version of "Skylanders: SuperChargers", possibly among a few other games. These games also supported native gamepads where available, which was useful for multiplayer.)